The Day Trader (24 page)

“Put the gun down,” I plead.

“Screw you!” comes his loud response.

“Nothing good can come of this if you keep going,” I say. “But if you stop now, it’s no big deal. We can forget it happened.”

“How can I make certain you’ll
never
forget it happened?”

For several seconds I say nothing, carefully considering my response. “I didn’t mean that I won’t remember,” I answer respectfully. “I will. You’ve made your point.”

Slammer’s eyes dart quickly to the right, and he waves the gun at Roger, whose hands are dropping slowly to his sides. “Get ’em back up!” he shouts.

Immediately Roger raises his arms back to where they were. It’s as if Slammer can see in all directions right now. Maybe I
have
underestimated him. Maybe he really does have extensive military training, and Mary was dead wrong about him exaggerating his capabilities. After all, she was dead wrong about the gun.

“What
did
you mean?” he asks me.

“I meant that there’s been no real harm done yet. You’ve scared the crap out of us and made your point. I shouldn’t have said what I said, and I shouldn’t have come at you the way I did. I was wrong. I apologize. Now we can get on with our day as if nothing happened and make some money.”

Slammer laughs loudly. “Do you really believe that?”

The trading floor has fallen strangely still. There’s still a commotion coming from outside the swinging doors at the far end of the room, but other than the five of us, everyone else has made it into the lobby. “Believe what?”

“That at this point we could get on with our day as if nothing really happened.”

“Yes,” I reply, forcing conviction into my voice, “I do.”

“Then you’re delusional or, more likely, lying. You might be able to go on with
your
day, but they’re going to cart me out of here in handcuffs. Or a straitjacket. Hell, I’ll be lucky to ever get out of the psycho ward they commit me to.” Slammer’s eyes narrow. “I’ve been in a place like that before. It’s no fun, and I ain’t going back.”

Mary lets out a muffled sob and Slammer levels the gun at her. She shrieks and I take a step toward him, but he turns the .44 back on me and once again I freeze.

“So what’ll it be, Gus?” he demands.

My heart feels like it’s going to explode, it’s beating so fast. “What are you talking about?” I can’t believe how calm Slammer is. It’s as if he’s been down this road before.

“What will leave a permanent impression of this day on your brain?”

“You showing mercy.”

“Good answer,” he says in a friendly voice, smiling as if we’re playing a harmless board game, “but not good enough. I’ve lost fifty thousand dollars in the past two months. Everything I had. A few minutes ago I said good-bye to my last dime, so I think you can understand why I’m not feeling very merciful at this moment.” His voice turns even tougher. “In fact, I’m feeling like I really want to hurt somebody. Like I want someone else to suffer too.”

“Let’s talk about it. I understand your pain.”

“Don’t give me that shit, Gus. You don’t want to talk about anything with me, and you don’t have any idea about my pain. You just want to get your sorry ass out of this situation in one piece. Once you’ve gotten this gun away from me you’ll turn me over to the cops and that’ll be that. I’m not stupid.”

“No, you aren’t,” I agree quickly.

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Sorry.”

“So, what’ll it be?” he asks again, raising the weapon slightly so that it’s pointed at my face.

Sweat is pouring from my body, and I wonder how a .44-caliber Magnum shell would feel ripping through my skull. I only hope his aim is good so I don’t suffer too much. “I don’t know.”

“Then I’ll have to make the decision myself.” Slammer swings the gun away from me, points it directly at Daniel, and pulls the trigger without hesitation. Daniel doesn’t even have a chance to react. The bullet hits him square in the middle of his chest with an awful thud, propelling him violently back against his cubicle wall, which collapses under his weight. He sprawls on the floor, grabbing his chest and struggling for breath. He makes a gurgling noise, then his body goes completely still. It’s all over before any of us can even move.

I gaze at Daniel’s body while Slammer scrambles over the wall into Mary’s cubicle, grabs her roughly by the hair, and jerks her to her feet. Then he shoves the gun barrel against her ear. “Get to the conference room!” he shouts at Roger and me, motioning toward the room off the trading floor where less than a week ago I agreed to be Roger’s mentor. In the wake of the gunshot Slammer’s cool has vaporized, replaced by sheer panic.

“Don’t do this, Max,” I plead, avoiding the nickname he hates as I stare down at the horrible expression on Daniel’s lifeless face. I hear shouts from the lobby outside the swinging doors at the far end of the aisle, but I can’t take my gaze from Daniel’s open, unseeing eyes. An expanding puddle of dark blood is spreading out on the carpet beneath him. The wound in his chest is massive. The bullet must have gone straight through him. “Let Mary go, Max. Please.”

“Get in the conference room!” he yells wildly. “Get moving or I’ll shoot her too! Right before I blow both of you away.”

“My God,” Roger whispers as he moves unsteadily out of his cubicle, his lip curling as he glances at Daniel’s body. “He’s going to kill us all.”

“Shut up!” Slammer shouts, roughly pushing Mary ahead of him. He waves the gun at Roger, then me. “Move it!”

Roger and I stagger ahead of Mary. She’s begging for her life. Slammer pulls her hair back tightly so she has to look up at the ceiling and can’t see where she’s going as he forces her ahead.

“Let her go, Max,” I say over my shoulder. “Please.”

“Shut the hell up! Now get in there!” he orders as we near the conference room doorway. “Get inside.”

When the four of us are inside, Slammer pushes Mary farther ahead of him, then slams the door shut. Now we can’t see what’s happening out on the trading floor. We’re totally cut off.

“Sit down over there,” Slammer orders. He indicates exactly where he wants us to go as he trots quickly to the conference room windows and lowers the blinds. “Come on, move it! On the floor.”

We sit side by side on the floor in the corner farthest from the door, as Slammer directs. He hustles back to the door, squats down, grabs a brown rubber jamb, and wedges it between the bottom of the door and the carpet. He stands up slowly, gun pointed at the door. “No one’s coming in or leaving until I say so,” he mutters.

“What are you going to do now?” I ask. “There’s nowhere to run.”

“Don’t talk to him,” Mary cries, grasping my arm tightly. I’m sitting in the corner and she’s between Roger and me. “For God’s sake, don’t provoke him,” she pleads. “He’s lost his mind, can’t you see that?”

Slammer’s gaze snaps from the door to her. “You think I’ve lost my mind, huh, Sassy?”

Mary hunches down against the wall and shields her face, realizing that she’s made a terrible mistake. “No, no, I don’t. I’m sorry,” she whimpers. I can hear sirens wailing in the background. “Please get me out of this alive,” she whispers to me. “I don’t want to die.”

“If you don’t shut up, you’ll be the first one to go,” Slammer warns her.

“Oh, God.” She buries her face in my arm.

Slammer walks slowly around the table until he’s standing directly in front of us. “Get up,” he says to her.

“No, please.”

“Don’t do this to her!” I yell so loudly my vocal cords feel like they’ll snap.

“Shut up!” he yells back, waving the gun wildly.

For fifteen seconds we stare at each other until finally he reaches down—gun pointed directly into my face—grabs Mary by her hair again, and brutally yanks her to her feet. She screams in pain as he hurls her against the far wall. As I instinctively scramble to stand up, he points the .44 at me and fires twice. Two searing blasts thunder past my left ear. For a moment I’m completely deaf and feel like I’ve been sent into a kind of suspended animation where everything is happening in slow motion. Then I tumble to the floor, hands over my ears, fearing the worst. But in the seconds after the gunshots I realize I’m not hit. There are two holes pocking the wall above me, but I have no pain other than a sharp ache in one ear, and I’m still conscious. For some reason, Slammer wasn’t trying to hit me, just terrify me. He was five feet away when he fired, and I know he could easily have killed me.

I glance over at Roger. He has turned toward the wall on his knees and covered his face with his hands, cowering. He’ll be no help if I see a chance to make a break for Slammer and try to wrestle the gun away. His true colors are shining through—as everyone’s do when the chips are down.

Mary screams, and my eyes flash back to the far corner where Slammer has her pressed face first against the wall, the end of the .44’s barrel moving slowly along her cheek toward her mouth.

“Why don’t you like me, Sassy?” Slammer demands.

“I do like you,” she sobs. “I do.”

“No, you don’t,” he hisses, his upper lip quivering as he tries to pry her clenched teeth open with the gun. “Open your mouth,” he orders.

“No, no, Max, please!” she begs, metal scraping her teeth. She turns her face away, but he forces her back to where he wants her. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asks pitifully. Still he slides the barrel roughly past her lips and down her throat.

“Stop it!” I yell, my voice sounding faraway because I haven’t fully recovered my hearing. I know the violent reaction my shout may cause, but I can’t help it. I can’t watch this. “Max! Look at me!”

He pulls the silver barrel from Mary’s lips, points the gun at me from across the room, and fires again. Another bullet blows past and I throw myself to the floor, hands over my head. Roger whimpers a few feet away, moaning that he just wants to see his wife and children again. Roger Junior and Alicia—he cries their names softly, over and over.

I peer between my fingers and see that Slammer has spun Mary around so that she’s facing him now. Her back is pressed to the wall, the gun just a few inches from her mouth. She’s sobbing uncontrollably and her cheeks are smeared with mascara.

“Why do you like Gus so much?” Slammer demands.

But Mary’s sobs are so powerful she can’t speak. She’s fighting for air as tears rush down her face, and she just shakes her head.

“Goddamn it!” he roars. “Answer me!”

But she still can’t produce words. Her chest is heaving too violently.

Slammer slowly pulls the hammer of the gun back and cocks it.

“Please,” she’s finally able to moan. “Please don’t. I’m begging you.”

Slammer’s upper lip quivers, and he turns his head slightly to the side as he aims the .44 directly at her face.

I get ready for another deafening roar and the horror that will cover the wall behind Mary after the bullet tears through her head. Just as I’m sure Slammer is about to pull the trigger, his lip stops quivering and he slowly lowers the gun and uncocks the hammer. A moment later he turns and strides quickly to a phone on top of a credenza near the conference room door. “Come here, Gus,” he orders.

I scramble up off the floor and hurry toward him so he doesn’t have time to think about going back after Mary.

“Slow down,” he warns, backing away from the credenza and training the gun on me as I approach. “Call the lobby and get Seaver on the phone,” he demands.

“Right away, Max.” I pick up the receiver and dial zero, not expecting anyone to answer. If they’re smart, everyone at Bedford has gotten out of the building and they’ve warned people on the other floors to do the same thing.

But someone at the other end picks up the phone on the first ring. “Who is this?” a male voice demands.

“This is Augustus McKnight. I’m calling from the conference room at the back corner of the trading floor.”

There’s a slight pause. Whoever answered put his hand over the mouthpiece and is talking to someone else in the background. It occurs to me that the police may have already made it to the scene and taken up strategic positions in the Bedford lobby. Perhaps tactical units are crawling through the trading floor toward us right now, though that seems unlikely as I think about it. It’s been only a few minutes since Slammer shot Daniel, and it seems more likely that the police would try to negotiate with a gunman before storming in. Especially when they know he has hostages.

“What was your name again?” the voice asks. The background noise grows louder when he removes his hand from the mouthpiece.

“Augustus McKnight,” I repeat slowly. “Who is this?”

There’s another muffled silence, but the man is back to me quickly this time. “This is Officer Grant of the Fairfax County police department. Is Maxwell Frasier with you?”

“Yes,” I answer, not making eye contact with Slammer.

“What’s going on back there?” the officer demands. “We’ve been advised that there were shots fired. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. We’re all fine.” I don’t want to say anything about Daniel because I don’t want Slammer to hear me tell someone on the outside that there’s been a killing. It might make him even more desperate if he realizes the police know he’s a murderer.

“But there were gunshots,” the officer says. “Confirm that for me.”

“Yes there were, but—”

“Get Seaver,” Slammer hisses.

“We need Michael Seaver on the line,” I say, making certain not to address the man as “officer.” “He’s the owner of Bedford and Associates.”

“How many people are in that room?” the officer asks, ignoring me.

“Four.”

“Get Seaver!” Slammer shouts at the top of his lungs.

“Please get Seaver,” I urge.

“All right, all right,” comes the response. The officer has heard Slammer’s frantic tone.

There’s a flurry of activity and shouting at the other end of the line, then the officer is back. “It’s going to take a few minutes to patch Seaver in. The building’s been evacuated, and we’ll need to find him outside.”

“They’re looking for him,” I tell Slammer. “The building has been evacuated.”

“Who are you talking to?” he asks suspiciously.

“Fairfax police,” I answer. I can’t lie to him at this point.